Thursday, April 28, 2005

The Candy Man Did

You can even eat the dishes.

In 1973, Sammy Davis Jr starred in a made-for-TV movie entitled Poor Devil. I watched it. (I was 12 - I thought Jack Klugman was funny.) Also watching was military PsyOp specialist and occultist Michael Aquino, who was delighted by the sympathetic portrayal of satanism - Davis portrayed a decent, hip demon - and by the care paid to details, such as a pentagram properly inverted. Aquino saw an opportunity to boost the Church of Satan's visibility by offering Sammy an honourary membership. Davis, who said he wanted "every human experience," took it a step further, and became for a time a practicing satanist.

Aquino devotes a chapter to the recruitment of Davis in his history of the Church of Satan, available in a .pdf hosted by the Temple of Set at xeper.org. Sammy tells his side in his autobiography Why Me? "Evil fascinated me," he admits. And what's more, and perhaps most significantly, the chicks "dug" the Baphomet pendant and the single long, red, fingernail he sported.

Davis got out when he realized that these kicks sometimes kicked back. "One morning after a 'coven' that wasn't quite fun and games, I got some nail polish remover and I took off the red fingernail." He reportedly told his valet, who after Davis's death told The National Enquirer, that "Those people were evil. I'm glad I'm free of them."

Interestingly, Davis writes of an earlier brush with Hollywood's occult underground. In the late 1960s, he accepted an invitation to a party thrown by actors whom he knew to be practicing occultists. The party became a ritual orgy, which concluded with a virgin's simulated sacrifice. Sammy was shocked to discover that the hooded figure leading the ritual was his own hairstylist, barber-to-the-stars Jay Sebring. In retrospect, perhaps it shouldn't have been such a surprise, as Sebring had previously invited Davis to visit the dungeon he'd constructed in his basement, and see the antique torture implements he'd collected.

The cat was always "a little weird," writes Sammy.

Sebring, you may recall, became a ritual sacrifice himself, when the Manson Family crashed Sharon Tate's party on Cielo Drive.

So now, with everything else in the world to write about, I'm writing about Sammy Davis Jr? I know, and I'm sorry. But I have two reasons.

First, I'm haunted by the image of the hooded figure of Jay Sebring. There's an Eyes Wide Shut moment for you. (" Bill," says Ziegler, "these were not just ordinary people.") Sebring was a celebrity stylist and successful entrepeneur, largely responsible for opening up the untapped and hugely profitable market for men's haircare products. Sammy thought he knew him. And even though he'd thought him "a little weird," he hadn't thought him that weird.

And Davis's story is, I think, suggestive of how elites can flatter themselves into an occult underworld that isn't all "fun and games." Davis wasn't looking for evil so much as he was looking for experience. (Hey - "the chicks dug it.") And because of his position, he likely thought he could afford it, and more importantly, that he had earned it. So he indulged himself, not just hedonistically, but also philosophically. And that can be an attractive indulgence for assertive personalities who have already attained a measure of power and position. One to be exploited.

Chicks or no chicks, Davis got out when he glimpsed just how heavy things could get. Some don't. And when they don't, they lend themselves to blackmail, and expose themselves - and perhaps more significantly, their offices - to criminal occult influence. Which seems something of the point to the elite paedophile rings run by Lawrence King and Craig Spence, apparently on behalf of elements of military-intelligence.

Christopher Lee, who co-starred with Davis in Poor Devil (Lee played Lucifer) was also a target for recruitment. Aquino writes that he'd been a fan, and had believed Lee to be a "behind-the-scenes backer of the 'satanic' movement." Until he read these comments from the actor in a March 1974 interview:

I am absolutely certain that there are thousands upon thousands of people today actively using black magic to get what they want. I'm sure they're responsible for much of the bad in the world, such as the wars in the Middle East [and] political corruption.... Black magic has a church-like hierarchy with leaders who want power over people. At the bottom are people who get conned into devil worshipping because they're lonely, insecure, or frustrated.... My roles in horror films brought me into contact with people who furthered my occult knowledge. I feel very much that it's my responsibility to persuade people to turn away from black magic...and I think my movies do just that by showing the true horror of evil.

1001 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Anonymous One,Maury Terry's book The Ultimate Evil discribes the links to a man called Manson 2.The people that were involved in the Son of Sam killings were reported to be social lights along with the Carr brothers.If half of this book is true,they are still out there,later.

I don't know about that, but Rosemary's Baby is based on Crowley's Moonchild book, which was the guide for Jack Parson and L. Ron Hubbard's BABALON Working, so he was at least somewhat exposed to those ideas.

You are on to it, Jeff. On two occasions when the RA perps have abducted my friend, I've had the joy of reading the text messages that they send me from her phone.

Beyond the gloating and the grisly details, they constantly make reference to being "Gods". One memorable text message read: "We are too strong. We are like Gods. You can never stop us."

These men are drunk with the fact of their impunity. It is the rigour of democracy itself that forms the landscape for the crime, and the perpetrators gorge on their impunity before the law.

Nietzsche said that "Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself" but it seems to me that, under conditions of peace, the warlike man attacks others. How else to flex your muscle in the passionless stasis of peace?

I'm writing a book about "Satanic Panic" and I've tried to tell people many times that Davis was briefly a Satanist. No one believes me, and I doubt they remember to look it up later. At least someone in Canada knows I'm not nuts.

Interstingly, Christopher lee starred in a Grade-B movie about mind control in 1972. A bewildered young man arrives in a US run military hospital in Germany where the doctors are doing Delgado-style behavior mod experiments on unwilling "patients". Christopher Lee finds out that he is next for a radio-cintrolled brain-implant and he FREAKS.